PDCWolf
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Posts posted by PDCWolf
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1 minute ago, Uuky said:
80% EAs are never leaving the EA status.
Source?
I'm definitely only talking about EA projects I've participated in... which is why I highlight the need to be attentive and objective, and not just huff hopium.
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33 minutes ago, Meecrob said:
Take it as a joke, but what I said is coming true. The day of the layoff announcement, I said Take Two feels like they stepped in dog poo with regards to KSP and want to get rid of it. Lo and behold a month later, its in IGN.
As much as we can sit here and go over all the ways Take Two makes mistakes, they are smart enough to know that the KSP IP has a non-zero value.I know there's people out there whom this series of events has hit as a train with no lights in the fog. However... for most this was highly predictable. Not to rain on your parade but it wasn't exactly discovering America.
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22 minutes ago, Observe said:
I wonder how much they want for the KSP IP? Would it be possible for the community to pool resources and buy it in some fashion? I don't know if such a thing would be possible, or how it might work.
I know this is mostly a joke, but I've gotta ask: And then what? Who from "the community" gets the rights? how does "the community" approve or disapprove licensing? Who even is the "community"? Just the people that fund the purchase or anyone with a forum account?
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12 minutes ago, MechBFP said:
For someone who has historically complained about wishful thinking, you are still just full of the stuff.
I mean, it's literally written in the article, didn't do much thinking, much less wishful.
9 minutes ago, Heretic391 said:Wow, fingers crossed it gets sold to someone competent. However, how greedy do you guys think TT is? They would certainly want to recoup their losses and ask for a price way higher than what the ksp IP is currently worth. It may explain why the Paradox deal fell through (i'm speculating!)
Overall, this is hugely disappointing. If only those terrible execs/managers didn't screw the game from the start (as per Shadowzones findings).
The way it's written... it seems nobody wants it rather than T2 wanting lots of money for it.
@Lisias KSP2 was the only title to get an aggressive marketing campaign too! their other titles are pretty much unheard of.
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Just now, cocoscacao said:
Sources please? I don't dispute the truthfulness of those quotes, I'm just not interested into digging out those things.
It's literally inside the OPs link.
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Please people, read the news, it's actually pretty horrible:
QuoteA small crew remains to support the remaining announced games with which Private Division has publishing deals: Moon Studios' No Rest for the Wicked (which is currently in early access), Wētā Workshop's Tales of the Shire, and an untitled project from Game Freak.
So the game is dead.
QuoteThe publisher has been in talks to find a buyer for the Kerbal Space Program IP, with or without Intercept Games attached. IGN has learned that discussions took place for such a deal with strategy game publisher Paradox Interactive, but fell through, and it's unclear if another buyer will materialize in time.
They did try to sell the IP with or without the amateur studio, even the most parasitic publisher out there skipped on the deal.
QuoteTake-Two is also in discussions to sell off Private Division, and has found interest from a private equity firm. Though a deal has not been agreed upon yet, sources were aware that conversations are being facilitated in part by individuals with connections to Moon Studios leadership. But two of my sources expressed apprehension about such a deal and its connections, citing a 2022 VentureBeat report alleging "oppressive" work conditions at Moon Studios. One source I spoke with confirmed that "everything" in the report was "true and worse" and another called the studio's founders "cruel" and "a nightmare" to work with.
Not only did they fail to sell the IP, they failed to sell their Indie uplifting business. KSP2 might've just ruined everything for PD or at least been the straw that broke the camel's back.
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11 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:
Seems like you, like most people here, are quoting something without understanding the actual context in which it was posted. So let me clarify that for you.
The thread is about refunds and if one should go about getting one. Primarily for Steam. But you literally brought up Epic and how if someone bought on Epic you wished them good luck. I was merely pointing out, for anyone who didn't already know, that Epic has the same refund policy Steam does. With the same option to talk to a human being if you get shafted by the automated system. If talking about Epic's policy is pointless, then it's on you for bringing that pointless topic up.
Speaking of things that are pointless in this discussion...
No, I have not chosen some arbitrary date for no reason. The layoffs and the building closure are effective on June 28. That was set by the company itself as outlined in the WARN notice we are all aware of and have read. I am waiting until that time - or, rather, giving them the extra 2 days to the literal end of June - to see if they release a statement or not before deciding if I'm going to ask for a refund. Why? Because if they do release a statement, I can read it and see if there's anything in there that could potentially be used to help bolster a case for a refund this far out of policy. Will there be a statement? Probably not. If there is, will there be something in there I can use? Again, probably not. Does it hurt to wait to see what happens knowing that the likelihood of a refund at this point is pretty close to zero? No, it doesn't.
Which begs the question: Why do you care if I wait or not? It has literally zero impact on you and what happens in your life, so why do you care? Why throw all this anger in my direction over something that means zero to you? You feeling lonely and need attention?
[snip]
Epic's refund policy is pointless except for the people inside said policy. As those who've exceeded the policy's limits would have to try and go through human Epic support. It's clear to me you haven't tried anything with them before, but believe me when I say there's a bigger chance to get $50 from punching sand in the desert than anything regarding human Epic support.
As for the layoffs, that's just clearly not knowing how things work. It's been explained many times that unless the relationship is excellent (and even then), nobody is allowed to come back to work since getting the notice. You don't want someone getting angsty over being fired to have access to the product to sabotage it, make copies, or whatever other destructive practice. If they're allowed back, they're very probably only permitted to finish up whatever task they were doing before not being allowed back in again.
If you don't see how what happened to 2K Marin is relevant, that is not a me problem, it's a you problem.
10 hours ago, Uuky said:So I think I'll never buy any more EA.
As I told someone else, that's the wrong lesson to learn. First off, it is a good lesson to stay away from big publishers engaging in EA, I'm pretty sure when I say there hasn't been a single successful AAA early access project.
On the other hand, most indie EAs are successful or at least reach a "maybe worth the money" point. However, you are required to be attentive, and not be positive. Positivity adds nothing. The people making a good job know they're doing it and don't need it, and the people lying to your face will feed off of it to lie more, and use it as a basis to ask for more money and more time.
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7 hours ago, VlonaldKerman said:
Nobody is entitled to a refund. Why would they give you a refund?
You bought the game at a discount, because of the chance that the game wouldn't get finished. If you are unhappy with the discount, you should not have bought the game.
Some civilized countries (and some very civilized steam employees) do not allow developers to just charge money to say they're going to make a game and then abandoning it. Everyone has the right to ask for a refund, and thanks to Steam, they've got the right to ask many times for a refund, making different or the same case.
13 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:Epic has, effectively, the same refund policy as Steam: 14 days and less than 2 hours played.
Which is not the point since most people are way past that, in which case Epic support is definitely one of the worst places, if they even bother replying to you. Steam allows you to talk to a human for refunds after the automatic system fails you.
3 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:Don't mistake my patience for hope. I have no illusions that the project is dead, and that the game won't get completed. I am merely waiting to see what, if anything, TT or PD say at the end of June before deciding if I refund or if I keep it as a reminder.
And it has been dead since Star Theory. All those decisions back then killed the game.
Some people have been waiting since 2013 for an official statement on 2K Marin's situation.
You've arbitrarily chosen a date as an ultimatum with almost zero reason, hoping they've chosen the same, or any date, to spend resources responding to the ~120 people still waiting to hear whatever. They've merely respected the law by giving their employees paid heads up time before firing them and have no further obligation with the project or the employees, much less their customers.
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16 hours ago, Temporal Wolf said:
It was fully funded and was on the books to be completed...
Provided it hit some milestone which it obviously didn't, plus not like they didn't fund it for 7 years.
43 minutes ago, WatchClarkBand said:As I said to a senior coworker who had also been in the games industry for a long time, "Game publishers are really just very niche hedge funds."
He tilted his head and replied "You're not wrong, but when you put it that way..."
The problem is much worse. To not get into controversial details... You can say that, apart from a very few huge name publishers, most of the gaming industry is nothing but the a temporary scapegoat for holding firms on their way to make more money. So not only do we have publicly traded publishers trying to maximize their profits inside the industry by doing cutthroat stuff like this, but we also have non game publisher stock holding companies buying up game studios, loading them with known enexcrementstification processes and then throwing the lifeless corpses away to release overtly mediocre (or even below mediocre) games afterwards.
Despite the successes of 10 or so titles, 2023 and 2024 have been disastrous for the hundreds of other games that released, and we're at about 20.000 layoffs between past year and this one, and the later 10.000 of that number are just this year since january.
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18 minutes ago, HebaruSan said:
If someone else buys a game for you on Steam and you refund it, do they get their money back? Or do you keep a credit?
As the recipient of a gift, you're only allowed to give permission to the gifter to refund it, they get their money back and you lose access to the game if it goes through.
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2 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:
Epic has, effectively, the same refund policy as Steam: 14 days and less than 2 hours played. As far as how painful it is compared to Steam...that I don't know.
With all this said, I'm going to wait until after June 28 to see if we get any type of official statement or story before I go the refund route. Heck, I may just keep the game regardless, if only as a warning to myself to not get involved in EA games ever again. It's a $50 lesson I shouldn't have had to deal with, but if I learned my lesson then that $50 was well-spent.
Stop wasting your life on this project. It's gone, It was gone not in May, but in 2023 when they fired devs that should've been working on long term features.
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3 hours ago, Vexillar said:
Agreed, but in business, goodwill (in the minds of accountants) is money.
Apologies if it's already been discussed - if so, I missed it - but if my teary eyes didn't deceive me, the figures show that T2 wrote off $2 billion in goodwill in the last quarter. That's an awful lot of happy players (present and future) being removed from the accounts.
For that much they could design, build and launch a real-life Kerbal X. Jeb would have been proud.
I'm pretty sure most of that is free stuff they give away in GTAO. GTAO cars are "valued" anywhere from $20 to $100, properties are about the same and they give discounts and freebies every week RDRO has similar systems too. It wouldn't surprise me if they're writing off those discounts and freebies as "shark cards not purchased" (or their RDRO equivalent) and thus signing them off as "goodwill".
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Reminder to use the human option. Go to "Help" on your library page for the game, and then "I've got a question about this purchase". That'll have you talking to a human, where you can make an actual case and discussion for your refund. Also check your local laws, as you might be lucky to live in a country where Steam's refund limits are null.
Be insistent, but also be smart about it when you make your case.
If you purchase on Epic... good luck.
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2 hours ago, MARL_Mk1 said:
A question just came to my mind.
Okay, let's say we assume 100% the game and it's development as a whole are completely dead once they drop that supposed last patch they still seem to be working on.
What happens with the game's status as Early Acces title? Is Take Two legally allowed to just, cut it's development short, get rid of any traces of promises and roadmaps, slap a 1.0 on it, and release it on Steam as if it had left Early Access taking everyone else's money?
Surely not... right?
Right?The answer is Yes. At any point in development you're just allowed to say "yep, that's it, this is 1.0." For proof, look at StarForge (the game, not the celeb prebuilt pc brand) and other games by the same developer. The only process by which Steam would care is a proper delisting. If you cancel development AND THEN delist an EA game from Steam, they will offer automatic refunds.
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9 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:
That's not news, though. We've known for a month now that 70 employees at Intercept Games would be laid off.
AKSHUALLY, as the highest quality hopium inhalers were saying, the only fact was that it was "an office in Seattle", and then the CEO said "the studio is not closed". This would be, I believe, the first, official confirmation that what we all were sure happened did in fact happen.
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23 minutes ago, Mutex said:
Direct link to Quinn Duffy's post on LinkedIn:
Lmao, I really want to believe there's 2 to 3 meanings to what he said. The first thing people are gonna see when they check the game out is the overwhelmingly negative reviews, and god forbid Matt is the first personality they find, telling people to refund the game.
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Seems someone officially broke the silence.
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7 minutes ago, Lisias said:
From the consumer's rights point of view, I agree with him.
But there's something else to consider: imagine I'm a youtuber that earnt some money on videos about KSP2 (completely unrelated subject...
). If this dude ask for a refund, they are still entitled to have their videos using KSP2 being published and monetized?
After all, any agreement about the subject had ceased to exist with the refund.
KSP2's EULA have this nasty bit, which has never been put into practice AFAIK:
QuoteUSER CREATED CONTENT: The Software may allow you to create content, including, but not limited to, a gameplay map, scenario, screenshot, car design, character, item, or video of your game play. In exchange for use of the Software, and to the extent that your contributions through use of the Software give rise to any copyright interest, you hereby grant Licensor an exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, fully transferable, and sub-licensable worldwide right and license to use your contributions in any way and for any purpose in connection with the Software and related goods and services, including, but not limited to, the rights to reproduce, copy, adapt, modify, perform, display, publish, broadcast, transmit, or otherwise communicate to the public by any means whether now known or unknown and distribute your contributions without any further notice or compensation to you of any kind for the whole duration of protection granted to intellectual property rights by applicable laws and international conventions. You hereby waive and agree never to assert any moral rights of paternity, publication, reputation, or attribution with respect to Licensor's and other players' use and enjoyment of such assets in connection with the Software and related goods and services under applicable law. This license grant to Licensor, and terms above regarding any applicable moral rights, will survive any termination of this Agreement.
As you can see, monetary benefit from these works is not regulated by the EULA, and neither is production of those when you haven't acquired the right to play the game. After the refund, Matt would've already ceded his rights to those works for T2/PD to use as they see fit, yet since monetization was never regulated, they can't do nothing about it. On the other hand, youtube being youtube, if T2 hits the claim button, they'll oblige, and I doubt Matt would go legal against them.
As a personal remark: Companies that think they own gameplay videos or livestreams are cancer. EULAs regulating what I do with a product I purchased beyond copying it to re-sell should be illegal, and in most civilized countries they tend to be.
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5 hours ago, Meecrob said:
I cannot word my point properly, so I'm dropping it. I'm not trying to say you need to be some sort of crazy person who must hand fly everything to be a dev.
You can all relax.
Lol, I didn't say he was successful
Don't worry, I kinda agree with the idea so I'll gladly say the controversial take myself, and then you can compare to your take:
If you don't know how to play the game, you have no hope of making it fun for the people who do.
Now, being bad is different and kinda excusable. Most devs @ KSPTV were horrid at playing the game, but this is not a game where you need to be skilled at to have fun. On the other hand they refused to use mods and I think IIRC they even prohibited using mods on official dev streams so that included mechjeb... up until about Skunky joined as CM.
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15 hours ago, Tony Tony Chopper said:
I actually don't quite understand why one would care about the money loss. It's a day of cheap work at worst.
Because the game got sold outside the US/EU.
$50 for me at release was between 30% and 50% of my paycheck. Of course I was lucky enough to live in a place where they regionalized prices, but still, even $8 was a good chunk of money I could've gotten some other really good games for.
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5 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:
The biggest lesson I learned is to never get involved in early access again.
Bad lesson.
Don't get involved in Early Access when it involves big publishers. A real studio needing early access would be overjoyed and communicative regarding feedback and progress respectively, devs in those projects hang around the community having useful discussions and develop their product knowing how much the customer is worth. On the contrary, these clowns just wanted to farm exposure on every update with a marketing campaign to try and get more sales, whilst they had a rigid vision with zero room for wiggle, and clearly had no regards with misleading about their progress or their future.
On the other hand, your own responsibility lies on being critical and analytic. DO NOT huff the hopium, do not exhale copium. Positivity does literally nothing for a project other than keeping you tied to it when the red flags start to show up. Early Access is a business, and contrary to what people too deep to accept they got scammed say (or that undervalue their time and money), you do buy games based on what they can be and not what they are, so be careful with your money, and know when to step out.
Also it should be pretty clear that no Early Access game (and even most full release ones) aren't worth anywhere near $50.
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As for the OP, I'd really note down:
- Most people aren't happy with just the same game with a coat of paint. Lift up what's good, re-do it professionally, but also add up new things.
- Unity is insufficient, this is why people don't want it. You'd need to rebuild enough systems around it (multithreading, physics joints, rigidbody physics). I don't know about Unreal but those are things to consider.
- Do not ignore veterans. Most of the community has been playing for a decade. If you release your product and there's nothing new for them to do, yeah, you just alienated a good chunk of the playerbase.
- Don't dumb down stuff. Part of the charm was the learning curve. Try-Fail-Improve doesn't work if you remove the first 2.
- Deeper features > more features.
- Learn how to make a UI. An indie dev making a bad UI is one thing, professionals being unable to make something usable is laughable.
- For the love of god just stop with the tech trees. Again, an indie not getting it right is one thing, professionals having no idea how to balance one is another.
- Precursor spacefaring race "lore" is not innovative, or even fun. It's the most overused, predictable cliche in almost every space game.
- Colonies do not need physics. Destruction is one thing but why both SQUAD and IG decided that ground buildings need physics simulated is beyond me.
- Think long and hard on why players would want to go interstellar after the first time they do so. Interstellar flight is so far the ultimate challenge for space exploration, so what are players supposed to do after that?
- Life Support is obligatory, as is any other form of danger for real spaceflight.
- Between 11 and 5, those systems need to be interconnected to allow not just engineering challenges, but multiple solutions. If every system just resolves to "add part to not die" then it's not fun.
I could probably think of more but I need to go to work.
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Lmao @ some people acting like the game was free. $50 is $50 and most aren't seeing those back. Thankfully I didn't pay anywhere near that so I not only feel vindicated but can look back and laugh. Other people really don't have that luck.
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7 minutes ago, MechBFP said:
No wonder they are pretty much canning all of PD
Source?
PD is already mostly occupied on their most recent launch and their upcoming project.
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Writing as I watch so this is more a disorganized stream of consciousness:
He should not have said the "you won't feel validated if you think the devs suck" and only 10 minutes later state how they were forced to hire juniors with no experience that didn't even play the first game. It's also very funny to see how it indeed was prohibited to ask the people that knew, much less consult with someone like HarvesteR. This also explains why they hit pretty much the exact same walls. It's HILARIOUS to me they might've pitched a re-engineering of the original game code with none or little knowledge of it and much less asking the people that worked on it about it. Talk about overpromising and underdelivering, something Uber was known for from previous titles.
It was also really easy to guess that T2 really did see Kerbal as a golden egg goose, good to have confirmation. I still believe it was... until they absolutely ruined it by believing overpromising amateurs on their bid and then placing the dumbest restrictions upon them. Add Nate being a serial overpromiser, and them banning scott manley! It's like they took every step and precaution to set themselves up for failure. It's no wonder some of us saw them as completely arrogant when they refused or were prohibited to consult or ask anyone with a smidge of knowledge of the franchise, and then proceeded to make the same or worse mistakes.
Continuing with hilarity. "This focus of visuals resulted in more fundamental design and gameplay decisions to take the back seat" AHAHAHA, as if the game looked any good. Yes, it has some modern fx and shaders, but to be a mess just to look like that? Incredible.
"Nate believed the difficulty introduced by wobble would be necessary to have a fun game." Absolute clown. At least ShadowZone understands wobblyness in real rockets, even if he uses that to make a dumb case about "teaching engineering". No, enabling parts to clip into each other or otherwise exploding out of the blue does not teach engineering, it teaches cheesing. Couple that with the statement saying he was actively steering stuff away from realism specifically to dumb it down... yeah... no wonder.
At this point (16 minutes) we arrive to the public reveal, yet there's no mention of any feature being complete even by the original Uber Entertainment, so either they did believe they could finish before the release, or they were already in the cycle of misleading that they had a full game when in reality they, at this point, had a bad frankenstein of KSP1. This is also known to be the point where the revolving door starts at, even after the transition from ST to IG. A revolving door filled with amateurs and juniors, hired under secrecy and now, we know also hired for minimum price.
At last we also have confirmation that they were working with the original codebase ST was using, so pretty much another "I told you" to the clowns stating they magically started a new game from scratch after the merge. To further pile up on this, it seems I also was right on pointing out the "multiplayer build" we got screenshots from was indeed the original one, and not some magical new build they started after the merge. By minute 28 we get a second confirmation of this... They really didn't, at any point have a single one of the features developed.
It's also a good warning story that, with multiplayer engineers being fired so early on... the long term product was dead long before these current days.
My key takeaways, in comparison/opposition to SZ:- Read the forums. It was impossible to miss what the community wanted... yet somehow T2 and then IG/PD/Nate did horribly.
- Early Access is for customer integration and feedback. If you don't care about feedback, then don't do Early Access. It seems we'll never get that font changed now...
- Dumb down accessibility, not the game itself. Games are hard because systems are most times loosely explained, or in the case of KSP1 have literally no explanation. Fix onboarding and you don't need to make everything inconsequentially easy to the point your game is a mediocre mess that elicits no emotional response.
- You can't make a product this complex with amateurs.
- You can't work on someone else's code without the ability to consult them... specially if it's the mess we know from KSP1.
- Stop using Unity. Unless you come out with something revolutionary, the public perception is always negative when you announce your project is in Unity, specially from a fanbase that's been dealing with its limitations and misuse for 10 years.
- Stop listening to Nate.
- KSP2 is dead.
). If this dude ask for a refund, they are still entitled to have their videos using KSP2 being published and monetized?
What do you think about Kerbal Space Program 2? I've wonder does the game will ever get full release after Take-Two closed its dev studio?
in KSP2 Discussion
Posted · Edited by PDCWolf
As a reply directly to the title:
KSP2 was an attempt at quickly cashing on a beloved franchise by modernizing it and shipping some of the most popular mods as default features. However, it ended up aiming for sub-mediocre quality on everything, not just out of releasing a product riddled with the most egregious bugs that 14 months later hadn't even been fully fixed (remember decay?), but also by making every feature an overly streamlined, puddle depth yawner. All of that mounted on a foundation even flimsier than the first game, with the privilege of letting us relive all the limitations and mistakes made during the prequel. That's what I think about KSP2.
"Full Release" might be a thing. I'm still thinking they'll release whatever they can scrap together as "1.0" as soon as they can and call it a day. KSP2 is dead, the KSP franchise is dead, and thanks to IGN yesterday we also discovered that not only is it dead but not even the most parasitic publishers want to buy it and it did so bad it helped take down Private Division. Further on, I don't think I'll ever be ready for whatever garbage might spawn with the name some 5 to 20 years down the line if anything ever does.